Somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy.
...
Pfft—
The dense energy beams fired from the standard-issue laser rifles distributed by the Sacred Selene Empire were undeniably far more lethal than conventional gunpowder rounds used on Earth.
The Chitauri's semi-organic flesh-and-metal bodies could not withstand the miniature explosions caused by the focused beams. A fist-sized bloody hole was melted and vaporized straight through the chest, front to back. Murky blood sprayed across the ground like a fountain, and they died before it even landed.
Whoosh, whoosh... Laser beams flashed continuously. Hissing sounds, muffled groans, and screams rose without end.
"Who ordered this?"
General Esdeath, a Foreigner-class Servant, stood atop an ice dragon and looked down as the Earth conscripts—whose temperaments had shifted rapidly and were beginning to show a ferocious, wolf-like edge—pinned the upper leadership of the Skrull warlord faction who had secretly colluded together, along with envoys from the Black Order, hard to the ground.
She asked the question calmly.
"Roar! Stupid human woman..."
Bang!
Esdeath raised a hand, stopping the conscripts from smashing the captive's legs. She slowly turned her head, unconcerned with appearances, and looked at the high-ranking Chitauri wrapped in black robes, pale-faced, with more exposed flesh than machinery and far finer organic armor. Her expression clearly said: I'm listening. Continue.
"You think you've won?"
The high-ranking Chitauri lifted his miserable, wrinkled face—already twisted out of shape by a heavy punch—and spat out a mouthful of blood.
He was laughing.
"Ha... fear... run if you can... fate descends now. The great Titan will bring you death... ha... be grateful. This is the salvation Thanos grants you..."
Shing!
A flash of cold light.
The swung crystal blade effortlessly split muscle, nerves, and bone in two. The Chitauri was severed cleanly apart as multicolored organs and frost-covered blood droplets scattered together. In a single breath, the two preserved frozen halves dropped to the ground.
"Next one. One sentence only. Answer my question," Esdeath said.
She smiled gently, harmlessly even. She had learned it from a certain life mentor of hers—to kiss with sharpness hidden inside tenderness. The contrast was delightful, wasn't it?
She had found a new pastime.
For example, disciplining the Earth conscripts assigned to her.
"The Black Order approached us first."
The next captive, a tall green Skrull, was trembling in both legs as he answered respectfully.
"Why did they approach you?"
Esdeath sounded interested.
"Because you allied with the Kree, so they came to us..." he said. "The Black Order's target is you. We Skrulls only wanted to survive, to defend our homeland, only wanted..."
As he spoke, he raised his hands and knelt upon the freezing ground near Esdeath, lowering his head, eyes cast downward.
"—for you to die!!"
In the next instant, he suddenly raised his face. His half-melted glassy eyes, cracked and burned, overflowed with hatred and fury. His entire body turned red and swelled like a balloon in a single moment. He released a dim yet scorching glow that ignited everything around him instantly.
Super Skrull flesh modification.
A high-frequency negative-energy bomb built into the body cavity.
"Executioners! Die with us—"
"Commander!" ×N
"Freeze."
The Imperial guards preparing to shoot him only saw ice in that instant.
Dull-shining ice, flowing ice, ice everywhere.
"A qualified soldier," Esdeath commented lightly.
"Someone throw him into the city he died protecting. The ice will shatter in ten seconds."
Within the crystal-clear frozen layer, the self-destructing Super Skrull remained suspended in midair in the posture of a furious roar. His swollen body had split apart, and the negative-energy beam refracted inside it resembled the first crest of a dark-red tidal wave.
A newly summoned Servant of Celtic lineage made his move.
"Ho! That's a wicked sort of thinking... hahaha! But this is war. Just looking at it makes my blood boil!"
The one laughing boisterously was a huge man whose mere presence evoked boldness, generosity, and wild freedom. His upper body was bare, and across the center of his chest were three battle scars as though a mother bear had swiped him.
He lowered his Spiral Rainbow Sword. Then, with the body of a brown bear, he lifted the massive iceberg overhead. With a thunderous roar, he hurled it through the air. Crossing a thousand meters while melting, the iceberg crashed into the still mostly intact alien Skrull city.
"No—!"
When the cosmic-energy-filled ice crystal was pierced by the negative-energy beam, the Super Skrull saw the horrifying scene before him. He wanted to stop it.
Too late.
The dim gleam vanished in an instant.
The eternally blooming flower of negative energy caused the city to wither into ruin.
"Oh, Fergus of the Red Branch Knights! That one's blessing has made the might of your heroic arms even more peerless... truly heaven-granted valor! Ah... inspiration floods through me..."
Though originally removed from the summoning list as a weakling, Shakespeare had forced his way here after Heroic Spirits revived and took jobs throughout the Empire. They had formed something of a network and possessed excellent information channels.
He came as a war correspondent.
And military historian.
"Is that so? Great writer, what gift have you received from the Divine Empress this time? Make sure to write me well... I'll attend your new play at the Imperial Capital Grand Theater when I return."
Fergus mac Róich only grinned honestly and hoisted his Spiral Rainbow Sword onto his shoulder.
"Hm."
The battlefield was still shrouded in Esdeath's unique freezing aura. She had already lost interest in questioning them further.
As for the Black Order's mixed-race aliens and fanatics, whether ignorant or brainwashed, they naturally worshiped Thanos to an extreme degree. They treated his words and ideals as sacred law. Nothing useful could be extracted from them.
Soul-searching was ineffective as well. Half-mechanical bodies, all kinds of modifications...
In any case, they no longer had original brains.
What they knew was limited.
The efficiency was low.
As for the Skrulls—though they were the oldest of the three great cosmic empires and the first to fall, a broken ship still has three pounds of nails. There were oceans of hot-blooded people willing to die for their cause.
That was heritage.
Pride.
Backbone.
The Skrulls at least had brains. They knew the Black Order's reputation was too terrible. After ambushing the Kree, they had not brought them into their core star systems.
Their royal house was weakened, their territory fractured, every faction refusing to submit to another, and ambition everywhere.
But that did not mean they were spineless.
Otherwise, the Kree Empire would have conquered them long ago.
With a single order from Esdeath, boundless blood and fire quickly engulfed this narrow little star system. Planets burned. The curses, insults, battle cries, accusations, and wails of alien men and women echoed throughout the entire afternoon.
By local evening, beneath terrifying crimson clouds of burning smoke, the battlefield was choked with foul, bloody air. This remote planet—where the Skrulls and the Black Order had secretly ambushed a Kree fleet and then hidden themselves to negotiate—had become a charnel ground.
This was a carnival for the Servants.
Including King Hassan, nearly half of the Servants currently fell under Esdeath's sub-fleet command. Former subordinates and superiors from the old Type-Moon directly governed star region—it was easy enough to command those she was familiar with.
"So, hiding behind the shadows like this—if this is all you're capable of, how disappointing."
During the purge, Esdeath seized the Black Order delegation's internal communication terminal. She activated it, interrupting the gaunt wizard appearing in the projector mid-inquiry. Her expression was mocking, her tone laced with disappointment.
"Disappointing?"
Having sorted out the cause and effect in an instant, Ebony Maw—the gray-skinned, long-faced, noseless tactician of a villainous power—stood in his robes with hands folded elegantly.
"No, no... heh, you shouldn't be disappointed, my friend. You should be delighted. The great Thanos himself will grant you your end. This is the darkness' greeting gift, a final generosity before death, a proclamation of doom... you should be grateful..."
Ebony Maw knew the inside story. This was what his master Thanos had called the 'Apostle War.' Though he did not understand its deeper meaning, he knew it was a struggle for the balance of the universe. He could not allow the Divine Empress Order to suppress the Black Order.
"Your dust-like body and mine will, under Thanos' benevolence, reach the universe's true and balanced truth..."
If the Divine Empress Order had taken action, then the annihilation of the fleet sent to contact the Skrull warlords in the Andromeda Galaxy was no great matter.
Ebony Maw calmly accepted the severe losses of the first Andromeda vanguard fleet. While verbally sparring with the ice-element humanoid before him, he transmitted the news to Thanos—who had just raided Xandar to obtain the Power Stone and was now tracking the Asgardian refugee vessel to seize the Cosmic Cube.
"To prattle about truth—are you or I qualified?"
"You and I are not... but the great Thanos is."
Ebony Maw spread his arms, his expression solemn and devout. "Death gives life meaning. It makes living beings understand how fleeting existence is—so they cherish it, treasure it... Look at this universe. How cruel. How filthy... My lord's will, the breath of death, fills my heart."
As a so-called wise man—renowned for possessing a black tongue that spread lies and evil wherever it went—the dark wizard was indeed far inferior to Thanos in his profound understanding of the universe's essence.
Yet he still had faint guesses regarding certain vast and indistinct abstract existences.
"Death... how sweet. The origin, creation, and manipulation of all life and souls in the universe..." He thus extolled Thanos' actions and praised the great existence behind him.
"?"
Is this how your Marvel universe introduces itself and shows off its background?
Ordinary people might consider Ebony Maw insane and incomprehensible. But Esdeath, who had seen much, realized the matter was not simple. The 'Death' in the horse-faced wizard's mouth did not refer to the end of life.
It referred to a certain existence—
A god.
Esdeath understood.
So, praising a god, were they? She had once served as a governor in the Type-Moon universe. Even if she had never eaten pork, she had seen pigs run. She had learned the cadence of chanting as well.
Competing to see who could talk better?
"Death? Truth."
She let out a soft laugh.
"From chaos was born Honkai."
"Life and death, war and peace, deceit and sincerity, sin and virtue, eternity and transience, infinity and limitation, destruction and creation... contradictions endure eternally. How can that be truth? Truth and fallacy are themselves contradictions. And contradiction is Honkai. The chaos of Honkai is the origin of the universe."
"It embraces all, gathers all rivers into the sea. Eternity is Honkai. And only that."
"Honkai endures forever."
"It is the most supreme, most sacred, most perfect, most beautiful goddess of the eternal cosmos."
"It symbolizes collapse, heavenly light, destiny, the everlasting history of ages, and the fleeting flow of time."
"She resides above the myriad worlds, overlooking the boundless reality and all its transformations..."
You boast yours. I'll boast mine.
Praising and glorifying, was it not? And since the object was Selene, Esdeath felt no embarrassment at all.
Given the chance, she could go on praising for an entire year without pause. The Imperial Secretariat's appointed literati had written countless eulogies—she only needed to borrow a few lines.
"..."
Ebony Maw was certain now.
It was not astonishment, but a sense of meeting a colleague.
The other party truly was an apostle of some great god. What his master had called the Apostle War was real.
Whenever he previously explained the reasoning and ideology behind Thanos' actions, the inhabitants of the planets that had received Thanos' 'benevolence' either interrupted him or attacked outright, showing no courtesy at all.
How rare.
Someone had listened through his entire speech. And instead of immediately snapping back with curses like 'You're spouting nonsense' or cutting him off with rage, she had responded with reasoned argument.
Worthy indeed of being from another Order.
"Ebony Maw."
Just as the dark wizard was racking his brain to debate this ice-blue female energy lifeform, a deep and powerful voice entered his mind from another communication channel.
"My lord. It is the Divine Empress Order."
Receiving and comprehending Thanos' meaning, Ebony Maw replied at once.
"The Divine Empress Order..."
Elsewhere, within the territory of the Nine Realms, inside the battered Asgardian refugee vessel drifting on the verge of collapse, the tall and robust Titan considered his subordinate wizard's report.
He smiled.
He raised his left hand—golden and massive—the heavy gauntlet upon it engraved with a socket where violet light shimmered faintly in the groove of the index finger.
"Is this a formal declaration of war? Very well."
Crack!
With a crisp sound, violent pale-blue cosmic energy particles burst forth, extending endlessly in all directions. The Cosmic Cube shattered into glittering crystalline fragments. With a rough pinch of Thanos' purple fingers, the fragments dispersed into the air, leaving only a single resplendent gemstone glowing with blue radiance between his fingers.
Without further inspection, following the usage method of the Infinity Gauntlet, he set the second stone—the Space Stone—into the groove of the middle finger.
Hummmmm—!
The golden-armored, purple-skinned Titan's capillaries seemed to glow. Blue primordial cosmic energy flowed within him. Thanos opened his wide-set, authoritative eyes.
"Put him through."
He glanced briefly and spoke.
At the same time, in the Andromeda Galaxy, Thanos' face appeared on the projector before Esdeath. The Mad Titan's voice was steady and imposing, like an immovable peak.
"Mad Titan?"
"That is merely the self-consolation of fools who fear me. I have never cared."
Thanos looked at the figures of the Divine Empress Order—Esdeath, the gathered Servants, the Imperial officers—projected before him, and spoke arrogantly.
"You are not Her apostle. You fall short. Let her come and face me."
This was his confidence.
He was the foremost apostle of Death in this world—self-proclaimed, yet not entirely so. Naturally, the one worthy of dialogue could only be the foremost apostle of Eternity in this world.
With that, Thanos unilaterally cut off the communication.
Hum.
The Power Stone flared. Burning violet flames engulfed the entire ship in an instant. Losing interest in wasting further effort on the Asgardians, Thanos tore open a spatial portal and returned to his flagship with the guards scattered around him.
"Prepare for jump. Knowhere."
All that remained floating in space were scraps of debris, wrecked ship components, and densely scattered corpses.
There were no reference points in space. No one knew how much time passed.
Two streaks of golden-red light—one large, one small—cut across the pitch-black expanse of the cosmos.
"Ho, look at what we've stumbled into... Karna."
—
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